SOEP Research: Survey Methodology and Data Science

From Cycles to Spirals: Rethinking Longitudinal Survey Design

Longitudinal surveys play a central role in social science research and policy advice but increasing demands for timely data pose substantial challenges for managing time, resources, and data quality across survey waves. While the Survey Life Cycle (SLC) provides a well established framework for organizing survey production, it is primarily geared toward single wave studies and offers limited guidance ...

Navigating Uncertainty: Do Communicable Diseases Influence Risk Preferences?

This paper explores the effect of COVID-19 infection rates on individuals’ risk preferences using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), a large population-wide ran¬dom sample. Exploiting county-level variation in a difference-in-differences design, we find that risk preferences remain unchanged: the effect is precisely estimated at 2.1% of a standard deviation (95% CI: [−0.4%, +4.6%]), ruling out economically ...

SOEP-LEE2: Data Updates and New Research Opportunities

The Socio-Economic Panel Linked Employer–Employee Survey, Version 2 (SOEP-LEE2), provides linked information on employees, establishments, and self-employed individuals in Germany. An earlier Data Observer article (Matiaske, Wenzel, Torben Dall Schmidt, Christoph Halbmeier, M. Maas, D. Holtmann, C. Schröder, et al. 2024. “SOEP-LEE2: Linking Surveys on Employees to Employers in Germany.” Jahrbücher ...

Measuring Ambiguity Attitudes Reliably in Surveys

This seminar introduces ambiguity, explains why it matters in economics, and discusses how ambiguity attitudes are typically measured in empirical research. Ambiguity plays an important role in decision-making, as most situations in life involve unknown outcomes or probabilities. However, people’s attitudes toward ambiguity are hard to measure precisely, as standard measures based on incentivized...

SOEP Annual Report 2025

Does Having Daughters Affect Political Preferences? Using Meta-Analytic Tools on Many Surveys

This study investigates whether having daughters impacts political preferences and whether this effect varies across European countries. We estimate effect sizes for 39 countries in the European Social Survey (n = 156,236) and aggregate estimates using random-effects meta-analysis, following a preregistered analysis plan. We find significant evidence that having daughters increases the preference for ...

Introducing Open Data Format: A Platform-Independent, Non-Proprietary, Metadata-Enriched, Multilingual Data Format for Tabular Data

This paper introduces the Open Data Format (ODF), a non-proprietary, metadata-enriched, and zipcompressed data format for tabular data alongside statistical software packages. It embeds structured, multilingual metadata directly within the data file, using the well-established DDI-Codebook standard (DDI Alliance, 2014), and enables access to both data and documentation within common statistical environments. ...

Comparing Panel Retention among Ukrainian and Other Refugees in a German Probability-Based Panel: Evidence from a Decomposition Analysis

Despite the rise in global refugee migration, probability panels surveying refugees remain rare. The German IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees, conducted annually since 2016, provides valuable panel data for research. In 2023, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a sample of Ukrainian refugees was added, along with a refreshment sample of refugees from other countries. This paper examines household-, ...

Diffusion of Cumulative Advantage? How Wealth and Health Trajectories Co-Evolve Across the Life Course among Older Adults

Objectives Cumulative advantage is a central concept in life course research. Prior research has primarily focused on one outcome domain, overlooking the possibility that cumulative advantage could extend into other domains–what we refer to as diffusion of cumulative advantage. We build on and extend cumulative inequality theory to conceptualize diffusion and apply it to wealth and health, two domains ...

Toward an Integrated Crisis Data Infrastructure in Germany: Linking the Socio-Economic Panel with Administrative Health Records

This paper examines the gaps in Germany’s data infrastructure for responding to crises, as revealed during COVID-19, and argues that linking the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) with administrative health records would strengthen the country’s ability to generate equity-sensitive evidence during future health-related crises. Drawing on evidence from the RKI-SOEP study, we illustrate the added value of combining ...